In recent years, proposals are made on complementary lithography that complementarily uses, for example, a liquid immersion exposure technique using an ArF light source and a charged particle beam exposure technique (e.g., electron beam exposure technique). In complementary lithography, for example, by using double patterning and the like in liquid immersion exposure using the ArF light source, a simple line-and-space pattern (hereinafter shortly referred to as an L/S pattern) is formed. Then, line pattern cutting and via formation are performed through exposure using the electron beam.
In complementary lithography, a charged particle beam exposure apparatus equipped with a multibeam optical system can be suitably used (for example, refer to PTL 1 and PTL 2). However, a Coulomb force (Coulomb interaction) acts among a plurality of beams irradiated from the multibeam optical system. In addition, in the case when exposure is actually performed, on/off state of each of the plurality of beams changes freely every moment according to a target pattern. As a consequence, it can be considered that interaction of beams in an on state also changes freely every moment and that positional relation on an irradiation surface of the plurality of beams changes from an intended positional relation.